As demand has grown for iron ore to fuel the Chinese construction boom, the focus for the Pilbara Iron Ore Mines has been almost solely on growth. This has resulted in plants being run beyond design ratings, construction of new infrastructure and upgrading of equipment in an attempt to match demand.

One of the Iron Ore miners in the Pilbara identified a lack of efficiency in the way they were executing work as well as limited effectiveness in the maintenance strategies that they were executing.

To allow for the maintenance to be completed on the new plants and modified equipment throughout the growth period, creation of maintenance tactics and work management master data has been fast tracked. This has been to support meeting the tight deadlines of getting the essential data in place to enable work execution to take place when the new infrastructure is switched on.

In some cases this has led to hurried implementations in Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS). Post start-up, companies have found themselves throwing labour at the planning and execution of work to cope with the increasing problems, without addressing the fundamental quality of their work management master data to control maintenance strategies and work scheduling.

Having poor quality data in place in your Computerized Maintenance Management System, such as SAP or Maximo, has many costs associated with it that can affect your bottom line. These include:

• Additional planning costs for most work orders on a repetitive basis.
• Repair costs associated with decreased reliability of equipment.
• Increased execution labour requirements to deal with ongoing problems.
• Opportunity costs associated with lost production.

Having maintenance strategies that focus on doing the right maintenance at the right intervals will provide the business with the foundation to operate with the lowest possible maintenance costs, while still achieving the maximum possible sustainable production. This will also ensure that you have each work order generated with correct parts and labour linked within the CMMS.

An Iron Ore mine located in the Pilbara recognised that there was significant room for improvement within their work management master data and maintenance strategies. They called in ARMS Reliability to assist. The ARMS support team assisted by:

• Mentoring staff to recognize and correct issues with equipment maintenance and data.
• Assisting to complete master data changes.
• Review maintenance strategies using RCM and FMEA Planned Maintenance Optimization (PMO)

After a nine month project period to assist with making changes and mentor staff to use the data and analytical tools available to them, the mine is now on the right track to correcting their maintenance strategies.

This will enable them to focus on executing tasks that are going to have an impact on the reliability of the equipment. In addition to this, they are also aware of, and making positive changes to their work management master data and business processes. This will help improve the efficiency of their work execution and control, so they can then be confident that their improved maintenance strategies are being executed.

The Need to Improve

The iron ore industry has been through a prolonged growth period where supply has had trouble keeping up with demand. High resource prices have also helped create a working environment susceptible to absorbing inefficient operating practices. Now the tides have turned, iron ore producers are shifting from growth to efficiency and sustainability and looking to better control and manage their costs ($/ton).

One of the Iron Ore miners in the Pilbara identified a lack of efficiency in the way they were executing work as well as limited effectiveness in the maintenance strategies that they were executing.

They found that they had poor quality work management master data, which was resulting in:

• Inefficient planning processes where planners had to add component replacements and additional labour operations to work orders on an ongoing basis.
• Poor schedule balance of maintenance plans, resulting in schedulers constantly altering work order dates.
• Exposure to potential decreased reliability. This can occur when inefficient planning means the labour and parts are not available when the job is scheduled and the work is delayed repetitively as a result.
• Increased labour costs as a result of inefficiency within the work management process often resulted in attempts to fix the perceived the problems, without fixing the root cause of the problem.

In addition to not being able to efficiently execute work the iron ore miner also recognized that the maintenance strategies associated with the work orders were not the most cost effective for the business, and often tasks that were not justified were being planned, scheduled and executed.

Solution and Approach

By reviewing and improving the work management master data the work orders generated by the CMMS system can be effectively planned and executed. When the data is reviewed, the improved operations and instructions will take into account all the past learnings from the job’s previous execution. It will also draw on the appropriate skills and knowledge within the organisation about the safest and most cost effective way the job can be performed.

Improved master data quality within the maintenance work order management system will result in reduced maintenance costs by making the job more effective and making the planning and scheduling process more efficient.

ARMS Reliability assisted the Iron Ore miner with improving the work management side of their operation by:

• Mentoring staff to understand how inefficiencies can be removed by improving the work management master data and coaching them through how to complete changes.
• Schedule balancing to reduce workloads on the schedulers to balance every week’s work evenly across the available shifts.
• Facilitation of improvements to planned and corrective maintenance task lists.

In addition to improving the work management processes in place to improve the efficiency of how the work is executed, ARMS also provided assistance optimizing maintenance strategies by:

• Completing Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) studies for problematic assets.
• Completing Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) with shop floor staff to encourage ownership and involvement in the development of the maintenance strategies.

Better Efficiency

By improving the way the work was completed the Iron Ore miner became more effective at utilizing limited maintenance planning department resources. This freed up time to allow them to focus their own efforts into resolving the root causes of problems within the master data. The maintenance engineers were also able to more effectively identify where issues existed and gained a greater understanding of how to execute changes.

The nine-month engagement of an ARMS Reliability expert assisted the maintenance department to:

• Develop the necessary skills to drive improvements in their work management master data.
• Develop a team of engineers who were up skilled and now capable of performing RCM and FMEA studies for new or existing asset.
• Transferred knowledge and capability to the maintenance and planning teams with an improved understanding of reliability and how to make improvements.

By having the site’s reliability engineers involved in the facilitation of RCM analysis and FMEA, as both participants and facilitators, they gained valuable insights into the processes. Over the course of time that the ARMS expert coached the engineers both train load outs and a bucket wheel reclaimer were reviewed using an FMEA approach and problematic tertiary crushers were studied using a full RCM methodology to optimise the planned maintenance.

Towards Best Practices

By having the ARMS consultant directly involved in assisting with improving the work management master data and maintenance strategies, and by on the job mentoring and coaching, the iron ore miner:

• Made good progress in understanding how best practice work management is completed.
• Now has reliability engineers who are capable of using data and analytical tools to complete detailed RCM studies for critical and problematic assets. They can also conduct FMEA analysis where RCM is not warranted.

In addition to the lasting benefits within the organization, other benefits obtained by using the experienced expert included:

• Removal of several thousand redundant maintenance plans.
• Improvement to hundreds of plans, items and task lists by adding external services, components and additional labour operations where they were required.
• Consolidation of master data and maintenance service instructions across like equipment to minimise the amount of data that required management.
• Assisting with improving the scheduling of work by balancing scheduled work to be more efficient by areas across the weeks.

With iron ore prices dropping to $73.20/t in late 2014 from highs of $180/t in 2011, this iron ore miner now has the tools and knowledge necessary to improve the ongoing operating costs of the maintenance department, taking the organisation as far as possible to the to the left hand side of the cost curve. This will help support the sustainability and profitability for many years to come.

 

Adam Clegg, ARMS Reliability

aclegg@armsreliability.com

 

Michael Drew, ARMS Reliability

mdrew@armsreliability.com

 

ARMS Reliability has offices in Australia, North America, South America, and Europe and works with clients located all over the world.